Copyright, data and licensing-OLD

Copyright provides an exclusive right to the copyright holder to reproduce, publish, adapt, communicate or perform a work.

If you are the copyright holder and you do not license your research outputs (e.g. your data), no-one else can legally use it. In Australia, no licence is regarded as the same as 'all rights reserved', confining any reuse to very limited circumstances.  This will restrict opportunities for data reuse, collaboration and proper attribution.

This comprehensive Guide provides information relevant to data owners, users and suppliers.  It includes flowcharts to guide decision making about data licensing and data reuse.  The Guide covers:

• Copyright basics
• Copyright and data
• Who owns your data?
• Rights management for data you own or create
• Choosing a licence & Creative Commons
• Considerations for data you reuse
• Complying with licence permissions
• Considerations for data supplied through a facility
• Support for licensing in data facilities

Key messages: A dataset may attract copyright protection if it meets certain threshold criteria. On that basis, significant quantities of research data will attract copyright protection. Since the output of most research is intended for reuse, it is recommended that a licence, such as a Creative Commons Attribution licence, be applied to make that intention explicit. Should the data not meet the threshold criteria for copyright, no harm will arise from the application of a Creative Commons Licence. It will still serve as a way to make known how you would like to be attributed, in addition to applying a limitation of liability and warranty clause to the data